Twist

by John Lutz

  And heighten the sexual experience.

  Had they had sex? She couldn’t remember. She felt as if they had.

  She tugged with this limb and that, twisting her head around, exploring again to see how firmly she was bound by the unyielding thick tape.

  Very firmly.

  Brad—or so he called himself—came into sight again, not so much shocking her as making her mind more muddled. He was naked except for what looked like surgeon’s rubber gloves, the kind you could almost see through and were like a second skin. And he was wearing blue plasticized paper booties of the sort that surgeons wore in operating rooms.

  “What the hell?” she almost said. It came out as more of a croak. She realized she’d shaken off enough of her sluggishness that she might muster a lusty scream. She strained to do just that. The result was the same croak. Sound that traveled about ten feet, and surely not beyond the walls.

  Brad smiled down at her. “You shouldn’t drink so much. It’s bad for your complexion.”

  Anger surged up in Gigi. She tried to thrash around in the bed but couldn’t manage even that. “Listen, you bastard. If you think—”

  She heard a ripping sound, and he slapped her in the face, across the lips.

  No! He’d fastened something—tape—across her mouth. He used the heel of his hand to press the tape tight to her flesh. She began breathing raggedly, forcing herself to inhale and exhale through her nose. She tried again to scream, but merely made a soft mewling sound.

  He grinned, liking that. The way he was gazing down at her, studying her, gave her the chills. Kids looked that way at frogs in biology class.

  Gigi tried to suppress her growing terror and make herself think. Think!

  She knew who Brad was, of course. The Lady Liberty Killer. And she knew what he did—at least what the police had released about his insane behavior. She was sure what was in store for her would be even worse.

  Squirming desperately, she managed to see that the gray duct tape, that had also been used to bind her wrists and ankles to the brass headboard and footboard, was so tight that her hands and feet were turning white from loss of circulation. And they were becoming numb.

  Gigi watched as he laid the large roll of tape on the bed. He bent over, and from down on the floor—probably from the big leather briefcase he had been carrying and had lugged here from the bar—he withdrew a knife. It had a long, slightly curved blade that was pointed and serrated and scared the hell out of her. She couldn’t take her eyes off it.

  She craned her neck and stared as he moved down along the side of the mattress, and she was sure he was going to cut her ankle.

  Another thought came to her.

  My toes! Is he going to cut off one of my toes?

  She heard the sound of the blade severing the tape.

  Her right leg was free, but only for a second. He gripped it with both arms and leaned hard on it so it was forced up as far as it would go. She tried to bend her leg so she could find leverage and push him away. The strain behind her knee was agonizing.

  He let her struggle for a while, enjoying it, then he jammed one of his thumbs deep, deep into her calf muscle, and the leg was paralyzed by pain from the knee down. There was no strength in it. She made the strange mewling sound again as he taped her ankle next to where her wrist was bound.

  He stood up straight, breathing hard and grinning. After moving around to the other side of the bed, he repeated the process with her left ankle and wrist. Remembering the pain of his probing thumb, Gigi didn’t resist.

  Acting quickly and knowledgeably, he spent less than a minute on that leg.

  She was left contorted and horribly exposed, and she hated Brad whatever-his-name-was with every cell of her being.

  With the hate came curiosity. With the curiosity came stark terror.

  What was he going to do? Mount her and rape her? Use the knife on her?

  She did know she was having trouble breathing in such a taut and extreme position, and with the tape across her mouth. Each breath was a struggle, both in and out.

  He sauntered back around to the other side of the bed, bent down approximately where she thought the briefcase must be, and took something else from it.

  When he straightened up, she saw that he was holding a coiled black leather whip. Tiny flecks of metal glinted sharply among its braids.

  He let the whip unwind to the floor, loomed over and checked her wrists and ankles to make sure they were tightly bound, and then stepped back to where she was looking up at him framed within her outspread legs.

  He positioned himself carefully, hefted the whip handle in one hand, and with the other blew her a kiss. It was much like the kiss blown to her by one of her friends as he’d exited the bar with the rest of her group, leaving her alone and vulnerable.

  She clenched her eyes shut. The blackness was complete. Not the tiniest amount of light entered.

  This isn’t real! Isn’t happening!

  The whip whistled through the air.

  She tensed and felt it cut the air inches above her taut flesh.

  Wake up, goddamn you! Wake up!

  It whistled again and did not miss.

  Quinn’s desk phone was jangling. The one on the landline he refused to replace. Fedderman stopped drinking tea in mid sip. Pearl quit bitching about Helen being wrong.

  Quinn picked up the phone, said the caller had reached Q&A Investigations, and then was silent.

  Pearl watched his expression change and she became afraid.

  A full minute passed, and he placed the black receiver back in its cradle without having said a word.

  “Something important?” Fedderman asked.

  Quinn let out a long breath. “That was Renz. The ferry that runs to and from Liberty Island, they found a dead cop on it.”

  58

  Misty with pain, her eyes were only half open now. The only sounds that came from her were those muffled mewlings, like the last laments of a dying kitten.

  Slowly, skillfully, he used the knife on her. The mewling became a slightly louder sound, a prolonged “Aaawwww” that might have been an expression of hopelessness and surrender , of supreme disappointment. As he worked the knife, removing things, her body began to bounce, and then was still.

  He bent over her, watching her eyes, watching, watching....

  The moment came and went.

  They had shared the experience.

  From his briefcase he withdrew one of the plastic Ladies.

  There was enough blood that he wouldn’t need any more lubricant.

  It was still hot in the Q&A offices. Humid and oppressive. Maybe not so much because it was a warm morning, and the city’s concrete still radiated heat. Maybe more because of the mood. Or maybe it was because the office smelled like the inside of an old jogging shoe.

  “You got any spray air freshener in here?” Jody asked. “Even if it’s bug spray.”

  “No,” Pearl said simply.

  “Phew! How can you—”

  “Back it up,” Quinn said. Then: “There!”

  They were all looking at Liberty Island ferry security tape, and there, according to Quinn, was Dred Gant.

  But was it really Dred Gant?

  Quinn stared at the man frozen in mid stride on the flat screen. He’d recognized the way he walked, with an almost imperceptible hitch. It was from the time years ago when the egg farmer had shot him in the leg. Quinn knew this because he’d been shot in the thigh himself. When the bone healed, it drew in part of the gouge the bullet had made, leaving one leg slightly shorter than the other, or set at a slightly different angle. Quinn had seen tape of himself walking. He had the same slight but distinctive hitch in his stride.

  Judging by the people around him, Gant was average size and weight. Nothing at all distinctive about him except, maybe, that walk.

  The problem was, Quinn couldn’t see Gant’s face because of the spread and bill of the NYPD eight-point uniform hat he was wearing. He was also wearing the
pullover the Harbor Unit called a wind shirt.

  “It’s Gant, I’m sure,” Quinn said. “I recognize his walk.”

  Fedderman shook his head, staring at the TV. “No one else would be sure.”

  Quinn knew that was probably true. There really were no gradations of sure.

  “You can’t see much of his face because of the hat’s bill and the downward angle of the security cameras,” Pearl said.

  “They mount the cameras high that way to get a wide angle,” Fedderman said. “Then they can’t tell what the hell they’ve got. Someday they’ll learn.”

  “That’s him,” Quinn said. “He was on the island.”

  “We know that,” Pearl said. “He killed a cop on the ferry. Name of Bill Straitham. Stabbed him three times in the heart. Stole his badge and eight-point hat.”

  “No, he was on the island, not just on the boat.”

  “He was trading up when it came to clothes,” Fedderman said. “I’ve done that in Goodwill.”

  “Meaning?” Jody asked. She was seated in one of the client chairs, knees drawn up, hugging both legs, listening and learning.

  “He was looking more like a real cop, every chance he got,” Pearl said.

  Quinn said, “The same guy, on the earlier Island security tape, had on an NYPD blue baseball cap.”

  “Meaning?” Jody asked again.

  “Earlier cap, earlier tape. We know he was on the island before he killed the cop.”

  “Mean—”

  “Meaning he was spooked and ran. Something made him change his plans. Helen was right. We’ve got a hold on this bastard. We just have to figure out how to use it.”

  “What hold?” Jody asked.

  “We moved him onto that island, almost nailed his ass, and he knows it. His confidence has to be shaken. If we moved him there, we can move him somewhere else, and be there at the same time.”

  “Guy like that,” Pearl said. “I doubt if he sees it that way. He’s probably enjoying playing games.”

  “Enjoying it so much he can’t resist it,” Helen said.

  She’d come in without anyone noticing. Quinn was surprised again how she moved so silently and smoothly for such a big woman.

  “We were just talking about how we owed you a tip of the hat,” Fedderman said. “We got the killer where we wanted him. Spooked him so he rabbited. Then he got lucky.”

  “Resourceful and lucky,” Helen said. “Renz told me there’s security tape, and he sent it over.”

  “It’s on the screen,” Quinn said, “stopped where it’s important.”

  Helen squinted at the image on the flat screen. “You sure that’s him?”

  Quinn told her about the limp.

  “Pretty scant,” she said.

  “He doesn’t know that,” Jody said.

  They all looked at her.

  “Any ideas?” Quinn asked the room in general, having one himself but waiting for someone else to come up with it. Wondering who it would be.

  Jody?

  “What we do now,” Helen said, “is call Minnie Miner, and then make sure she gets a copy of that tape.”

  Quinn smiled inwardly. Helen. He should have guessed.

  Quinn made the call.

  Minnie Miner was so overjoyed she would have crawled through the phone line, if she hadn’t been on her cell.

  “Who authored this strategy?” she asked.

  “Helen Iman. But there’s nothing in writing.”

  “You know what I mean. I’m going to see that Helen gets a raise in pay.”

  “But she doesn’t work for you.”

  “I’m a taxpayer,” Minnie said. “She works for me.”

  “Minnie . . .”

  But Minnie was gone from the ether.

  “She was happy?” Helen asked, when Quinn had hung up.

  Quinn nodded. “Orgasmic. She thinks you should get a raise. Thinks she can give you one because she’s a taxpayer.”

  “Damn right.”

  Pearl was about to say something when Quinn’s desk phone jangled. He picked up quickly so she’d think twice if twice was needed.

  The caller was Renz, and he spoke up before Quinn was finished with his brief “Q&A Investigations” phone greeting that was by now as automatic as if it were electronic.

  “Guess what we got,” Renz said.

  “Yankees tickets?”

  “Sort of. Murderers Row.”

  59

  Quinn and Pearl took Quinn’s old Lincoln and drove to the address Renz had given them.

  By the time they got there, the rest of the troops had been called out. One side of the street had been cordoned off. There were patrol cars parked at careless angles to the curb. An ambulance was backed in, lights out. Quinn and Pearl knew it was waiting for the body to be released. From what Renz had said on the phone, there was nothing here to be revived.

  Beyond the ambulance, neatly parked at the curb, was the black Ford that the nasty little ME Nift drove. If Pearl noticed it she gave no sign. They got out of the parked Lincoln and walked toward the building’s entrance.

  THE PADMONT BLDG, proclaimed an engraved brass plaque mounted near the doors.

  “Nice address,” Pearl said. “The victim had a lot to lose.”

  A uniform was on station in the marbled lobby. He pointed toward the elevator, said, “Fifth floor.”

  Quinn and Pearl rose to Five.

  The murder apartment was two doors down from where the elevator door slid open. Another uniform was standing guard in the hall outside the open apartment door. Beyond him, inside, they could see shadow movement, now and then a person, as the crime scene unit did its meticulous work.

  Pearl entered first, followed closely by Quinn. A CSU guy handed each of them a pair of thin rubber gloves, which they fitted to their hands as they made their way to where the body was, in the bedroom.

  The main bedroom, actually, because the apartment had three of them.

  The other two bedroom doors were open about halfway, but straight ahead was the largest bedroom, beyond a fully opened door.

  They entered. The CSU was finished in there, and the only other live people in the room were Harley Renz and his sometimes flunky and spy, Nancy Weaver. Quinn hoped Renz wasn’t going to sic Weaver on them to gather information he could use to blame anyone but himself if they failed to stop this killer. That would be like Renz. And like Weaver.

  Weaver was an attractive woman with a devilish glitter in her brown eyes. Her dark hair was straight and worn in severe bangs that for some reason made her look vaguely Egyptian. She smiled and winked at Quinn and nodded to Pearl. Pearl had never much liked her, but at the same time they understood each other. Women of the world.

  Renz was standing back a few feet, his hand cupped to his chin in what was an obvious pose, staring at what was on the bed.

  “Good Christ!” Pearl said.

  The woman on the bed was on her back with her wrists and ankles bound together to the headboard so that she was rolled back and her buttocks were exposed. What was left of her buttocks.

  Nift the ME got busy, probing the corpse’s pubic area with a pointed steel instrument. He looked over at Pearl, amused. Nift was one of the few people Quinn knew who could get under Pearl’s skin.

  Nift grinned at Pearl. “Ass looks like hamburger,” he said. “The killer’s usual ritual, scourging them. You know the kind of whip I mean, Pearl. Badasses in medieval times tortured their enemies with them.”

  Pearl knew. She’d seen a whip of the sort used for scourging. It had bits of sharp metal braided into it and caused horrible pain and damage.

  “He didn’t forget her tummy,” Nift said.

  The corpse’s stomach had been cut C-section style, as with the other victims, and some internal organs and lengths of intestine lay beside her.

  And there was something else.

  “That’s this victim’s Lady Liberty statuette,” Renz said, seeing where Quinn was looking. “Hard to recognize under all that blood
and what have you. This time he inserted it in his victim’s anus.”

  Quinn looked at the mess of blood and feces, and the object protruding from it.

  “That’s the technical term,” Nift said to Pearl. “Must’ve hurt like blazes.”

  Pearl gave him a look. “You should know.”

  Quinn rested a hand on her shoulder, gave her a squeeze. Their signal for her to shut up.

  When he was sure Pearl had her temper under control, Quinn glanced around. There was something about this room, about the part of the apartment they’d been in. Nothing was out of place or set at a wrong angle. The walls were too bare. There were no small items lying about.

  Weaver had been watching him with half a smile, as if wondering when he was going to catch on. “Nobody lives here,” she said. “The dead woman’s name was Gigi Beardsley. She was in real estate. She still had her master key that unlocks those clunky metal box things they put on vacant properties so all the agents can show them. Door key is inside the box. A real estate key was needed to get in the box and then to get in here.”

  “You said ‘still’ had her master key,” Quinn said.

  Renz spoke up. “Seems Gigi was fired yesterday, not long before she was killed.”

  “But she still had her key.”

  “Yeah. All longtime employees have master keys. But Gigi hardly ever used hers. She was in human resources and rarely showed property, so giving it back must have just slipped her mind.”

  “Not her lucky day,” Nift said, putting away his instruments in a plastic bag so he could keep them separate and sterilize them back at the morgue. “Except it was her good fortune Lady Liberty didn’t go in torch first.”

  This time Pearl ignored him. “Gigi spelled with a G, I take it,” she said to Renz.

  “Two G’s, actually. Our guy is still alphabetically inclined.” Renz motioned with his head in the general direction of the bathroom. “There’s a ‘Freedom to Kill’ message scrawled on the mirror in blood, like at the other scenes. CSU took samples, but it’s no doubt the victim’s blood. The killer probably uses his gloved finger to dip into blood and write.”